An Al Qaeda terrorist leader responsible for the planning of an attack that claimed the lives of two American soldiers and dozens of others was killed in a drone strike on March 19, CBS News reported.

Saturday night, the Pentagon announced the death of Qari Yasin, who planned the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan. Yasim was a member of the Pakistani Taliban, a group with close ties to Al Qaeda.

Yasin was killed in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province. The New York Times reported that Paktika Province has been a major staging point for the Pakistani Taliban; many operatives crossed the border from the Pakistani province of North Waziristan after a 2014 offensive against the terrorist stronghold by the Pakistani army.

While the focus of recent military action under the Trump administration has been against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, the attack on Al Qaeda assets in Paktika Province showed that the administration was keeping up the battle on that terrorist organization, as well.

“The death of Qari Yasin is evidence that terrorists who defame Islam and deliberately target innocent people will not escape justice,” Defense Secretary James Mattis said in a statement.

In addition to the hotel bombing, Yasin was also alleged to have perpetrated a 2009 attack against the Sri Lanka cricket team during its visit to Pakistan. Six policemen and two civilians died when the bus was bombarded with grenades, rockets and rifle fire.

Yasin had an obscene amount of blood on his hands, and the only thing we can regret about his departure from this vale of tears is the fact that it took the better part of a decade to happen. One can only hope that Yasin is far from the last Al Qaeda figure to meet this fate.